Description
This webinar will introduce the fundamental components of relational bodyful practices for your couple clients and you will learn how to apply a bodyful practice in a relationship therapy setting. Somatic-based experiential practices can be incorporated by the therapist as an assessment tool to highlight an attachment dynamic and get under the story content and assumptions that keep intimate partners stuck in disconnection. They are also an intervention tool to help the clients shift from defensiveness to receptivity and to broaden their repertoire of connection. This is the kind of tool that is both useful in session and out of session in the client’s daily life — an intentional practice to incorporate into their relationship that helps them to shift into congruence between what they desire and what they express. Through the use of bodyful practices, your clients will experience a more genuine and inspiring intimate connection.
Learning Objectives:
- Describe the components and benefits of incorporating Bodyful Practices into your work with couples.
- Effectively facilitate a basic bodyful practice with your clients.
Agenda:
(5 min) Welcome and Introduction to the Speaker
(5 min) Assessment of Workshop Attendees’ Experience Level/Competency
(15 min) What is a Bodyful Practice for couples and what makes them effective?
(15 min) 6 components of Bodyful Practices with couples
(20 min) Present a Bodyful Practice structure with a case example
(15 min) Total-body connectivity fundamentals for nervous system coherence and whole-body connection & expression
(15 min) Bodyful practice as assessment tool for attachment dynamics
(20 min) Bodyful practice as intervention & template for client homework
(10 min) Questions
Presenter Bio:
Melissa is a Licensed Professional Counselor, Dance/Movement Psychotherapist, and AASECT Certified Sex Therapist who specializes in intimacy and relationship therapy. A graduate of Naropa University in 2009, Melissa weaves together her Masters level training with additional training in Pragmatic/Experiential Therapy for Couples (PET-C), Sex Therapy, Psychodrama, and Authentic Movement. She is also certified in Somatic Archaeology and is a SomaSource LifeCycle Practitioner. Melissa is former adjunct faculty at Naropa University where she taught Counseling Ethics & Professional Orientation in the Masters in Somatic Counseling Psychology program.
Through study and work, Melissa has crafted the Somatic-Concentric Sex Therapy (S-CST) model for working with clients. S-CST is a confluence of dance/movement therapy, contemplative, and sexology theories. This model harnesses the client’s actualizing tendency, a tendency towards growth and complexity, toward a fully embodied experience and expression of the sexual self.
Her book, Whole-Body Sex: Somatic Sex Therapy and the Lost Language of the Erotic Body was published in January 2021. Whole-Body Sex supports readers to craft a personally meaningful, consensual, and sexuality-affirming embodiment of self.
(NBCC and AASECT CEs are available. This program meets the requirements of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists [AASECT] and is approved for 2 CE credits. These CE credits may be applied toward AASECT certification and renewal of certification.)
